...a companion blog to "Math-Frolic," specifically for interviews, book reviews, weekly-linkfests, and longer posts or commentary than usually found at the Math-Frolic site.

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"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show." ---Bertrand Russell (1907) Rob Gluck

"I have come to believe, though very reluctantly, that it [mathematics] consists of tautologies. I fear that, to a mind of sufficient intellectual power, the whole of mathematics would appear trivial, as trivial as the statement that a four-legged animal is an animal." ---Bertrand Russell (1957)

******************************************************************** Rob Gluck

Friday, June 13, 2014

Friday Potpourri


 First, a note that Sunday morning, here, I'll have up my review of Jordan Ellenberg's new volume, "How Not To Be Wrong" -- hint: (like everyone else) I loved it.

 Now, some recent math links:


1) Math professor Dan Rockmore argues the case for banning laptops from the classroom:
http://tinyurl.com/obtfzzv

2) I'm often taken by surprise by which tweets I do get significantly re-tweeted. This week one by Cliff Pickover, regarding pi, was popular:
https://twitter.com/pickover/status/444533534284189696/photo/1

3) New podcast from Sol Lederman, with David Reimer, interesting author of "Count Like An Egyptian":
http://wildaboutmath.com/2014/06/07/david-reimer-inspired-by-math-35/

4) The 111th Carnival of Mathematics appeared last week full of its usual variety:
http://boolesrings.org/krautzberger/2014/06/08/carnival-of-mathematics-111/

5)  Oftentimes, mathematical puzzles have ramifications in other fields, as in this news report about the four-color theorem and crystal structure:
http://phys.org/news/2014-06-four-color-theorem-linked-crystal-magnetic.html

6) A bounded gaps update and other polymath projects:
http://cp4space.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/bounded-gaps-one-year-on/

7)  Alex Bellos' latest book, "The Grapes of Math" is newly-available in US:
http://tinyurl.com/nutompp


8) From xkcd (channeling Fermat):
http://xkcd.com/1381/

9) Lastly, my own latest rant about "truth-in-labeling," courtesy of Coca-Cola:

http://math-frolic.blogspot.com/2014/06/pomegranate-blueberry-juice-not.html



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